For more than 20 years, Komdragmetall has been directly involved in the development of the gold mining industry of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). In that time more than one hundred gold mining operations have worked with us. Among them are companies like Aldanzoloto, Indigirzoloto, as well as collectively own groups like Zapadnaya, Seligar, Amga, Zolotinka, Drazhnik, and others.
Originally, Komdragmetall created relationships with gold mining enterprises by centralizing the purchase of precious metals from all mines in the Republic. These metals were sent by us to the State Fund of Russia to create a gold reserve in accordance with established quotas. In that period, Komdragmetall worked directly with the Russian Federation Committee for Precious Metals and Stones on questions of pricing, crediting, payment and shipment of metals to refineries.
*Refining – the process of extracting heavy metals from their surrounding impurities.
Gold is purified using the ‘dry chlorination’ method – saturation of the melt with chlorine (base metal chlorides become volatile, and noble metal chlorides float to the surface) or using sulfur, electrolysis (pure metals are deposited on the cathode), and chemical purification.
Silver is purified by cupellation, electrolysis and chemical purification.
Platinum and platinum group metals (ruthenium, palladium, iridium, and rhodium) are purified using the wet method, i.e. dissolving the ore in mineral acids and separating the metals from the solution using special reagents.
The purity of gold obtained from these processes is 99.65%, for silver it is 99.90%.
The refining is conducted by specialized enterprises equipped with the necessary tools and technology. For example, Precious metals in Russia are refined at: the Gulidov non-ferrous metals plant in Krasnoyarsk, the Novosibirsk Refinery, the Ekaterinburg non-ferrous metals plant, the Prioksky non-ferrous metals plant, the Shchelkovsky secondary precious metals plant, and the Moscow special alloys plant.
The first refinery to which raw materials (gold) were sent for processing was the Prioksky non-ferrous metals plant in the city of Kasimov.
During difficult times for gold mining, Komdragmetall supported the industry financially by providing discounted and interest-free loans, prepaying for gold deliveries, issuing guarantees to commercial banks for loans to mining collectives, paying for delivery of heavy earthmoving equipment, mining equipment, fuel and lubricants on the basis of installment payments, etc.
In total, between 1992 and 1999, 160 tons of gold were supplied by mining operations via Komdragmetall to the State fund of Russia and the State fund of the Republic of Sakha(Yakutia).
With the passing of the 1998 federal law entitled “On precious metals and precious stones”, the relationships between Komdragmetall and mining enterprises reached a new level. Authorized government bodies began to exercise their right to by precious metals and stones only under the conditions of advanced prepayment and signing of metal purchase and sale contracts.
Today, taking into account current needs, we continue to work with local mining collectives by making regular advance payments and buyouts of previous metals. This allows us to provide gold and silver to our own jewelry production and to the Sakha jewelry industry as a whole.
Reliable partnerships have been established with such gold mining enterprises as the Poisk LLC group of enterprises, Omoloy and K SPK KRO, Nirungan LLC, Dokhsun LLC, and others.
Komdragmetal has a 40% stake in the authorized capital of all gold mining enterprises that are part of the Poisk LLC group. This includes 6 closed joint stock companies: Aikhal, Nera, Pobeda, Talynya, Taryn, Erel.
We are linked by long-term business relations with the refinery OJSC Gulidov Non-Ferrous Metals Plant of Krasnoyarsk, where extracted raw materials are sent for processing. Thus, we have organized total vertical integration from the supply of raw materials to the sale of finished jewelry.